Earth's Game
by i1Polaris
Summary: You take a Battle-Ship 200 meters wide and a 1000 meters long, and with just two strokes, they cut it into thirds. When they turned on that plasma torch it literally cut the Herald in half, down the long axis. Then they swung it back and forth like...
1. Chapter 1

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In reference to the movie, "Game", I'm curious, and would like to turn it in a sequel... or even a trilogy? No, not Game2. That won't work but the Game, set in the future as it is, would make an excellent launch vehicle for a series of intergalactic space wars. It could go something like this...

As an ice trader, and one of the few surviving members of the original Games I'm just-back from the inter third of the galaxy where things move really fast, I have news, and need of a discreet audience with Star Fleet.

About the Game:

You probably never heard about the second game. It was delayed a couple of days because the night before it was to start, someone poisoned the water supply with a designer drug. Ya, there are rules in place, now.

35 years ago, you were just a child. You believed whatever you were told about the Game and why it was important. Its not the barbarous thing people have made it out to be.

It began as a celebration of our victory over the Invaders and as an affirmation of life. It was the Human Race that repelled the Invaders, we were the ones that held the line, drove them back from our galaxy and they've never returned. The price we paid was a full third of our Star Fleet, but you'll never see That in the history files.

One of the concessions we're allowed for the victory, is we don't allow tourist on our planet. The military leaders and dignitaries from other Races can gate in to be present for the Game but few have ever been allowed tours. No one else is allowed anywhere near our home-world.

All the history books say we held the line. The Humans held fast and repelled the Invaders. That's what the Game is about, not some blood thirsty psychotic Race's need for, or love of butchery.

You probably don't know how it started. All the history books buried that first incursion in the renegade piracy that went on at the end of the 1st Milky Way War, well, after the 3rd one, so far the peace has held.

Back in the beginning when the gates started going up, it didn't take long for some of the enterprising races to start stealing from the gates. That led to the Star Marshals and we all know that it was their heavy handedness that led to the 1st MW War. Although it was brutal, it didn't last very long. Back then the Galaxy wasn't very well mapped out and only a hand full of the races were even trading with eachother.

The 2nd MW War was just an out-and-out power grab. You had 3 of the major powers try to carve up nearly two of the Spiral Arms and when objections were raised... there were warring races, less well armed, but everybody was gating in from everywhere and when they went home they tended to take the war back with them.

...This is about the "Invaders" from Andromeda, and their first raid on the Milky Way...

At first they thought it was a mistake. It happens, not very often but it happens. But when they started shooting, all Hell broke loose. All the outbound hubs cut power to their gates, protocol, so it stayed local but they gated in on their own gate and back out the same way.

As per protocol, the first two major powers on scene coordinate, verify whatever it was, keep it localized and contained, and then send in scout and recon ships, to assess and report back.

They grabbed up some of the out bound gates, some cargo containers and their crews then it seems, blasted anything that moved. It didn't make any sense what they took or what they left behind, tools, food stores even a couple of containers of weapons. There was a cruse liner docked at one of fueling stations who's passengers saw the whole thing and that was another thing that didn't make any sense... this relativity large cruse liner, full of people was completely ignored as though it wasn't even there.

Ya, if all the powers hadn't had all that left over paranoia from the 3rd MW War those "things" could have dropped in on someone's Home World and then nobody out side the Federation would have believed "it" came from Andromeda and wasn't some rouge element going to start MW War 4.

The whole Hub system came from that arcane 20th Century network, the World Wide Web. It was discarded mid 21st century because the inefficiencies, that and how easily it was hacked. It being easy to hack made it perfect for warring and alien races distrustful of eachother but wanting to do commerce.

Each randomized jump through system has its own security and inspection force, something the old Earth based "WWW" never had. That and whatever product, service or people being "jumped" through the system never gets to a destination World but only to a collection gate where its inspected again before being allowed to continue. Therefore, each "Package" is sent from its Home World to a small Hub and given its senders address and its destination address. After that nobody knows which set of major and/or minor Hubs it will go through before it reaches the collection point of the destination address. It may be inefficient but after all the inspections its unlikely to go BANG! when it arrives. 


	2. Chapter 2

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35 years ago you were just a child, so you only know what's in the history books. I was a Junior Officer, 11th Division Fleet Marines, Star Fleet. We were at the point of attack just above the galactic plain when the Invaders came through the Star Gate. We had 1/3 of the fleet on station and were suppose to hand 'em their ass and send-'em-home.

My command was assigned to the heavy cruiser (Fleet Star Ship) FSS Herald. We were the tip- of-the-spear, just 2500 meters in front of the Star Gate. When it pulsed, we were to drive straight through Full Power, welcoming all who passed by with a broadside. We had two more heavy cruisers echelon right and a Destroyer on our port flank. The Battle Ships, being slower off the mark, were to engage and destroy anything that got by us. Then we would be through the gate and take the fight to them, where ever it was they came from. It seemed a good plan as the other 2/3rds of the fleet were just 30 seconds out and would deal with whatever was left of them when they got there.

What the Admiralty didn't expect to find was a debris field, the remnants of the nearly 600 warships that were on station. Nobody made it to the gate. You take a Battle-Ship 200 meters wide and a 1000 meters long, and with just two strokes, they cut it into thirds. When they turned on that thing like a plasma torch, it literally cut the Herald in half, down the long axis. Then they swung it back and forth like a flashlight; it must have been like chopping fish on a table with a cleaver. They went through us once, then turned around and on their way back to the gate, chopped all the big pieces into little pieces and left. The whole event didn't take half a minuet. When the rest of the fleet arrived, all that was left of the 18 plus thousand men and women were 47 of us. Most of the survivors were welded in sections that had an air supply or were in full space suits when it started and were adrift in the debris field.

When I said "Nobody made it to the gate." that's not actually true. When the Invaders left, some of the debris got sucked through the gate with them. Two small forward reconnaissance jump-ships that got sucked up in an among the debris field and went through the gate with the invaders both jumped back thru the back wash and weren't detected. The Invaders must have thought nothing survived their attack. Neither crew of the jump ships knew of the other but both reported, and one even photographed, the 2/3rd dark side of a planet with lights that couldn't be anything other than cities.

For them, it was just a piece of bad luck but it was their arrogance that was their undoing. They jumped from the battle field, directly back to their home world... no intermediate hops to look behind them or to misdirect anyone following them. I suppose, because they didn't leave anything bigger than a house, they didn't think anyone had survived. The idea that anyone could have actually followed them. I suppose if "they" had never lost before, "they" never learned to be careful.

We sent 3 Star Fleet Corvette class Delivery ships through the gate. These aren't fighting ships, per say but do have a light weapons platform with counter measures for self defense. Under full power they can't outrun missiles but are fast enough to buy time for the weapons platform to shoot'em down. The 4,000 Xmine payload for each of them is enough to kill a planet. Each Xmine is a 300 Megaton hydrogen warhead with its own targeting and delivery system. The delivery system is based on a stripped down version of the old 21 century cruse missile but the targeting system is a work of art. Completely autonomous, it can be directed to a general area, if on a planet can land, hold its position and communicate with the the other Xmines or the central command for instructions or even select its own target.

The real beauty to these ships is their ability to "un-zip". If you want a wide dispersal of the Xmines, the ship can execute a high speed full power turn and peal off the ship's skin forward of the engines, spilling its cargo in less than 4 seconds. That's a thousand Xmines a second spilling out of a high speed arc. If just one in a hundred of them lights up its engine and fires out in front of the dispersal pattern detonating at max range or when it encounters whatever defense is in the way... the other 3,960 Xmines are going to be hard to keep from getting to their target.

Setting the Xmines was remarkably easy. The first ship turned hard out of the gate toward the fleet and "un-zipped". The Invader fleet was moored so close to the gate that some of the Xmines had attached themselves to ships before the ships started shooting at them.


End file.
